backbone of colonial life and trade. Their fishing vessels ventured from the confines of Cape Cod and Cape Ann to the coast of Maine, from there to Sable Island and the adjacent coast of Nova Scotia, and finally swarmed by hundreds upon the banks of Newfoundland. Every year they sent out from New England harbors more than ten million pounds of cured fish. They outdid the mother country in the quantity and quality of the catch. Bilboa and Calais bought their best fish from the holds of American vessels; Lisbon and Oporto bartered the products of their land on board the craft of New England masters; the Madeiras, Jamaica, and the Barbadoes willingly exchanged their wines, sugar and molasses for the third-grade product of the northern seas.

Their prosperity, due to the expansion of the fishing industry, had led the northeastern fishery into contact with England and France. Towards the former they had already demonstrated that an English admiral was quite helpless in attempting to enforce unpopular decrees upon a seafaring people. Furthermore, in disregard of the navigation act of England, they maintained a large contraband commerce with Europe. France, on more than one occasion, had learned to dread her New England rivals, who already had furnished men and vessels for the conquest of Nova Scotia. Embittered against the French for their · policy of exclusion from all fishing grounds, and indignant at the home government for the disgraceful consequences of the treaty of Ryswick, the fishermen of New England at the close of the seventeenth century were waiting impatiently an opportunity to use their men and supplies in helping the mother country drive the common foe from the fishing grounds of North America.

CHAPTER V

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

During the course of their development in the eighteenth century the fisheries of New England attained a commanding position in commerce, in legislation, and in international affairs. In extent and value, the fisheries reached their culmination at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War when over a thousand vessels gave employment to upwards of ten thousand men. For three score years they played an active and aggressive part in the struggle between England and France for mastery in North America, indirectly by keeping England awake to the necessity of securing the provincial fishing grounds for her own subjects; directly, by the capture of Nova Scotia and the taking of Louisburg, the stronghold of France in America. When the common foe had been driven from the field the colonies and the mother country turned upon each other. The colonies openly violated measures that were passed prejudicial to their interests. England looked upon her colonial subjects as means for developing her industries and influence at home, she attempted to enforce her laws upon the people of America, and, failing in that, passed a law that was designed to cripple the commerce of New England and to drive her fishermen from the sea.

The beginning of the reign of Queen Anne found France and England involved in a new war. One of the causes of the struggle was the claim of France to a part of Maine and to the whole of the fishing grounds from the Kennebec River to Labrador. The French seemed determined to

defend all of their claims. They had between 400 and 500 vessels engaged in the fishery; they were well armed; they outdid their competitors in the quantity of fish that they caught, claiming, at the opening of the century, that their catch of codfish was equal to the supply of all continental or Catholic Europe; their fishermen were first in European markets, and their fish sold at a larger profit than that of their rivals. The outlook for England to retain what few fishing privileges she possessed in America was nearly as dubious as was the prospect that she could regain in war the advantages that had been lost through shameful treaty.

The people of New England, feeling keenly the loss of a province that had been won very largely by their valor, and stirred to action by the loss of the privilege to fish upon the Acadian fishing grounds, needed little urging from the mother country to enter heartily into the contest. They employed armed vessels of their own; they swept the coast of Nova Scotia; they equipped a fleet at Boston and twice attempted the conquest of that province; and they furnished four battalions of fifteen hundred men and thirty transport vessels to Nicholson when, in 1710, he captured Port Royal, thus finally winning Nova Scotia as a province under the crown of Great Britain.

Peace was concluded by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. By this treaty the British statesmen attained, or supposed that they had attained, what had been their ambition for many years, the supremacy in the fisheries of the American seas. All Nova Scotia, or ancient Acadia with its boundaries, was made over to the Queen of England and her successors. The French were excluded from fishing on the coast of that province or within thirty leagues of it, from Sable Island to the southwest. Newfoundland with the adjacent islands came wholly into the right of Great Britain, as did Hudson Bay with its borders. On 1 Isham, The Fishery Question, pp. 15-16.

the other hand, the French were given possession of, and the right to fortify, the Island of Cape Breton and all other islands both within the mouth of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and in the Gulf itself. At Newfoundland they were allowed to catch fish and to dry them on land from Cape Bonavista to the northern point of the island, and thence down the western coast as far as Point Riche. They were prohibited from settling or fortifying any place on the island of Newfoundland.1

When all things are considered one must conclude that the treaty was greatly to the advantage of Great Britain. If adhered to strictly, it meant that the fishermen of New England would secure a monopoly of the fisheries of the coast of Maine, the Bay of Fundy, and the shore and bank fisheries of Nova Scotia, with equal chance to compete with French fishermen in all other fisheries. The narrow limits of the French possessions would result in a serious curtailment of their fisheries. Bitter opposition, however, was aroused in England because France had been given any privileges whatever in American waters. Lord Oxford was impeached because he dared to advise his sovereign that "the subjects of France should have the liberty of fishing and drying fish in Newfoundland." This was a new sentiment in diplomacy for an English subject to express; but since his day the great principle that "the seas of British America are not to be held by the British subjects as a monopoly, and to the exclusion of all other people," has never been entirely disregarded by British statesmen.2 We shall see shortly how the treaty resulted neither in excluding the French from the coasts of Maine and Nova Scotia, nor in diminishing the extent of their fisheries; but, on the contrary, it gave them exceptional advantages

1 McDonald, pp. 229–233.

2 Sabine, p. 14.

in the new fishing grounds granted to them on the coast of Newfoundland.

The period between the treaty of Ryswick, 1698, and that of Utrecht, 1713, was one of general depression for the New England fisheries. The accounts of the time are few and discouraging. On the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire the fishing was practically suspended; and on the Nova Scotia coast it was reduced greatly in value. In 1699, the governor of Massachusetts gave passes for fourteen sloops and ketches of 25 to 36 tons and carrying five or six men each. Marblehead had not ventured extensively into this industry in which, before the century was over, she became recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as leader. The town of Salem saw the number of ketches that she had engaged in the fisheries dwindle from 60 or 70 to a mere half dozen.1 The coast from Cape Cod to Cape Sable was rendered extremely dangerous to our fishermen by the depredations of the Indians and French.

At the opening of the century Gloucester had a population of about seven hundred. This plantation, just entering upon its second half century, had as yet gained no importance in maritime affairs. There is no evidence to show that before 1700 Gloucester had a single vessel engaged in the fisheries as far east as Cape Sable; a Gloucester sloop fished there in 1711. Activity in the shipbuilding industry began with the century. Ships and brigantines were built for Boston merchants, and sloops for the townspeople. The sloops were used at first for carrying wood and timber to Boston; later they were used in a wider coasting trade and in the fisheries, which began to develop rapidly after 1720.2

It was at Gloucester that the first schooner was con

1 Weeden, I, p. 373.

2 The Fisheries of Gloucester, pp. 9-22, passim.